The social impact of illness is still overlooked by many, and patients suffer further and are marginalized by social prejudice and ignorance. To address these issues, doctors and governments have a role to play, and education needs to be improved along with institutional changes.
The 21st century is the age of science. Science plays a key role in medicine, and as new treatments emerge, many of the diseases and physical challenges that have threatened humanity are being conquered one by one. However, human disease cannot be fully understood by science alone. Science can explain the mechanisms and changes in disease, but it can’t explain the challenges that people with disease face in society. In addition to the biological pain and symptoms of the disease, patients also face many social challenges. The cost of treatment and the disruption of life due to illness can be as great as the illness itself, and these challenges are difficult to overcome alone, requiring institutional support such as health insurance and a culture that cares about patients. Ironically, however, the sicker you are, the more you are marginalized by the system and society. In this article, I would like to address the problem of patients being marginalized from society due to their illnesses, and explore ways to solve it.
I have experienced these problems myself. I suffer from hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids are inflamed and swollen areas near the anus and rectum that collect blood due to poor posture or constipation. The treatment is to make a surgical incision in the swollen area and suture the area. After the surgery, the area will continue to bleed, especially when passing stools, and a large amount of blood will be lost. In addition, the area will be painful and you will have to spend a lot of time taking care of it, such as taking sitz baths. You’ll also have to wear diapers or sanitary napkins because of the small amount of pus and blood that comes out of the surgical site. However, I realized that people think of hemorrhoids as a fun, funny, and embarrassing joke rather than a painful disease.
When I returned to school after my surgery, my friends were initially concerned when they saw that I had had surgery and that I had a painless needle hanging from my neck. But then they started making hemorrhoid-related jokes and pranks, and the longer it went on, the more offended I became. I had to take sitz baths when the pain got really bad, so I always carried a sitz bath with me, but one friend said, “You should carry it in an opaque bag to cover it up because it doesn’t look good for others to see.” When I told them I had hemorrhoids, some people reacted as if it was no big deal, as if it was funny. I started to feel reluctant and ashamed to tell anyone that I was sick. I became uncomfortable answering people who saw me with an injection in my neck and asked me what was wrong, and when I wanted to go to the bathroom to take a sitz bath or change a sanitary pad, I would hesitate for a long time and make up other reasons. Things were going in the wrong direction.
People’s serious pain and illnesses are used as comedic material, medical devices that are crucial to their treatment are made ugly for others to see, and pain they’ve never experienced is disparaged. It takes courage to even say that you are sick and in pain. The more you are sick and struggling, the more you need the support of others, and the more you are pushed away and marginalized. But this is not uncommon. Women’s periods cause a great deal of pain and discomfort, but the pain is insidiously stigmatized, and tools like sanitary napkins are seen as something to be ashamed of. People with mental illness are afraid to go to the doctor for fear of being labeled as mentally ill and being penalized.
Why do these things happen? As we’ve seen, ignorance and prejudice about physical challenges are widespread in our society. Examples include stigma against hemorrhoids, stigma against menstruation, and stigma against mental illness.
I think we can divide this problem into two parts. First, there is a false bias against the disadvantaged, and second, people lack the ability to raise awareness. It is difficult to trace the origins of prejudice against disadvantage itself, but what is clear is that it has been around for a long time. In the modern era, these biases are reinforced by people’s speech and the media. This reality makes it harder for marginalized groups to be heard, and their existence becomes increasingly invisible. To break this vicious cycle, it’s imperative that doctors and governments, in particular, take action. Doctors are the best equipped to understand people with physical disabilities, and they need to use their expertise to spread knowledge about the physically disadvantaged to the public. In the field of mental illness, Oliver Sacks’ books are a great example of this role. By portraying people with mental illnesses as individuals with personalities that are different from the rest of us, rather than freaks of nature, he helped to dispel some of the public’s prejudices and fears about mental illness. However, to ultimately solve this problem, it will take more than individual efforts by doctors, but also institutional changes led by the state. In addition to public service announcements to change people’s perceptions, we need to establish a welfare system that can help them materially.
I think the lack of ability to raise awareness of bias stems from a failure of education. We are taught in school and the media to empathize with and help others when they are struggling. But this training has a fundamental limitation. If we don’t have the ability to distinguish between those who are suffering and those who are not, the ethic of helping them doesn’t even have a chance to work. Many diseases, hemorrhoids in particular, are masked by stigma, making it difficult for people to recognize the difficulties they face. Therefore, moral and ethical education must go beyond the abstract and principled level of “we should care for the underprivileged”. It should teach students specifically who the marginalized are and what difficulties they face. It should also cultivate their ability to examine the mechanisms by which their suffering is socially invisible.
I believe that this is a serious health issue, and that it is as important as treating diseases with biological causes. Therefore, it is necessary for doctors and scientists to actively work to educate the public about diseases that are ignored in our society. The invisibility of these diseases contributes to patients falling through the cracks of the legal system, so it is important to have policies in place at the national level to identify and help patients.
It’s sad to be sick, but it’s doubly sad to be sick, and the injustices of our society make it doubly sad. Speaking from experience, the pain caused by this is sometimes greater than the pain caused by the disease itself. I hope that this article will make you think twice about other people’s illnesses and be considerate of them. I also encourage you to learn about the invisible sufferers around you. It is my hope that these individual efforts, coupled with social and institutional changes, will make life much easier for those suffering from illness.
